The "Childmyths" blog is a spin-off of Jean Mercer's book "Thinking Critically About Child Development: Examining Myths & Misunderstandings"(Sage, 2015; third edition). The blog focuses on parsing mistaken beliefs that can influence people's decisions about childrearing-- for example, beliefs about day care, about punishment, about child psychotherapies, and about adoption.
See also http://thestudyofnonsense.blogspot.com

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Sunday, March 29, 2015

Sundance Canyon Academy Requests Severe Criticism (Inadvertently)

Some days ago I received an e-mail from one, Justin
Taylor, representing Sundance Canyon Academy, a residential treatment facility in
Utah that appears to treat teenagers who are said to have Reactive Attachment
Disorder. Justin said that since I had been trying to educate people about this
disorder, I would like to embed in this blog the Sundance infographic
describing Reactive Attachment Disorder. This suggestion led me to have a look
at said graphic, and I was most interested to see the amount of mis- or
dis-information that could be crammed into a few pictures. You can see it too,
at http://www.sundancecanyonacademy.com/reactive-attachment-disorder-infographic/. (But I'm finding that I sometimes get an error message for this; if you go to the home page and scroll all the way down, you'll see a link to this thing.)

Let’s look at this display under the usual strong
light. First, in an introductory passage plagued with writing difficulties, Sundance
states that “Reactive attachment disorder is a serious condition that some
children and teens must live with”. This claim ignores the fact that RAD is not
a diagnosis used for children of school age or older, and no diagnostic method
exists for assessing such a problem after the preschool period. In addition,
Sundance seems to be uncertain about whether any treatment would be helpful,
otherwise why say that the children “must live with” the problem?

To continue looking at the introduction and the
infographic: it’s notable that Sundance seems to have ignored the publication
of DSM-5 and the change in terminology that limits the term Reactive Attachment
Disorder to what used to be called the “inhibited” type, a
developmentally-inappropriate emotionally-withdrawn behavior combined with
irritability, sadness, and fearfulness even during nonthreatening interactions
with caregivers. What used to be called the “disinhibited” type is now
categorized as disinihibited social engagement disorder (DSED), and this
involves a lack of preference for unfamiliar people (note that some lack of
preference for familiar adult caregivers would be quite developmentally
appropriate for adolescents). Sundance still references the two types,
disinhibited and inhibited. Be that as it may, they provide an interesting,
though somewhat notional, list of symptoms for each, apparently having read a
bit of DSM-IV and a bit of DSM-5--
though not very carefully.

Here’s what Sundance says about the disinhibited
type of RAD (now known as DSED): the
symptoms are “being highly selective” (?), “readily interacting with strangers,
rather than showing natural strangers anxiety” (copy editor to the rescue,
please!), “seeking unnatural comfort from strangers” (whoa!), “exaggerating the
need for help doing basic daily tasks”, “taking part in inappropriately
childish behavior”, and “appearing overly anxious”. Nowhere does the
infographic clarify how children of different ages might show such “symptoms”
in different ways, or deal with the issue of developmentally appropriate
practice and diagnosis. The “highly selective” part is a mystery to me, and
certainly does not come from any edition of DSM. Ready interaction with
strangers is something I would expect from any well-developed teenager, and woe
betide the poor child who is sent to any residential treatment facility if he
or she does not have that capacity. “Unnatural comfort”-- well, I’m sure that doesn’t mean what it
might be taken to mean, but the use of the terms “natural” and “unnatural” is
without meaning except as a way to scare parents. As for needing help in basic
daily tasks, this “symptom” comes straight from Attachment Therapy, where it’s
regarded as a way in which disturbed children manipulate and exploit credulous
adults; it’s not in the DSM description. “Inappropriately childish behavior” depends
on how old a particular child is, as well as on the possibilities the
environment presents. Finally we have “appears overly anxious”, but wait,
hasn’t the person been declared to lack “strangers anxiety” and to approach
strangers, normally a source of serious anxiety for young children? Apparently
the children are simultaneously anxious and not anxious (but from the
Attachment Therapy viewpoint, that only shows how cunning they are).

All right, if you’re not too depressed already,
let’s have a look at the statements about symptoms of the inhibited disorder
(now the only type called RAD). Here we have “avoiding eye contact” (oops, is
there some confusion with autism spectrum disorders?), “unresponsive or
resistant to comforting”, “steer clear of physical contact” (never mentioned in
DSM), “excessively holding back emotion”, “preferring to play alone”, and
“detaching from others”. The DSM description considers children with this
inhibited disorder as inhibited and emotionally withdrawn, with negative emotional
response to interactions with others. Although eye contact might be interpreted
as an emotional interaction, it is not a very useful measure because it is
characteristic of other disorders and
can occur because of cultural restrictions on children’s looking directly at
adults.

Sundance’s infographic goes on to inform parents
that children of all ages may have
Reactive Attachment Disorder (their definition) if they do the following:
“cruelty to animals for no reason” (perhaps there are some good reasons
Sundance could suggest?), “watching others closely, but not engaging in social
interaction” (school, perhaps?), “destructive to self and others”, “impulsive
negative behaviors”, and “abnormal eating patterns”. Some of these, of course
are matters of extreme concern, and although they may occur in typical children
in the toddler and preschool period, in older children and teens they would be
evidence of a serious need for treatment. However, except for a tendency to
hypervigilance, they are not mentioned in DSM in descriptions of either RAD or
DSED.

As you can see, Sundance Canyon Academy either does
not have a very good understanding of these disorders, or may see some benefit
in offering confused material to parents. Certainly some parents who have been reading
about Attachment Therapy on the Internet will find some of these ideas familiar
and therefore acceptable.

It’s quite a labyrinthine process to find out what
treatments are used at Sundance Canyon Academy, and what their basis in
empirical evidence might be. They use a method described at www.whytry.org, whose website offers claims at
evidentiary support, none of which appear to have been published in
peer-reviewed journals, and most of which seem to be simple before and after
studies. There are some other issues, too, but this post is getting too long
already.

One more point of interest: a major figure at
Sundance is described as having been the owner and operator of Odyssey Youth
Transport, an organization that comes into the home at night to waken sleeping
teenagers and to take them away to residential treatment facilities. How this
outfit worked when owned by the Sundance staff member, I have no idea. However,
at present its website (www.odysseytransport.com) includes a
parent handbook that speaks of transport workers as Guides and inquires whether
the child knows that the Guides are coming and whether he or she has
alternative or favorite routes out of the house. Parents are told that after
they converse with the Guides on their arrival at the house, they are to awaken
the son or daughter in his or her bedroom and introduce the Guides. They
provide a letter to the child telling what is happening. They are then to leave
the house and asked “Please do not return to the residence until the Guides
contact you, or until the rental car has left the premises.” As I said before,
I have no way of knowing whether this draconian approach was taken when the
Sundance staff member owned Odyssey, but the possibility is an eyebrow-raiser.

In a second e-mail, Justin Taylor asked whether I
could point out changes needed on the Sundance website. I think I’ve done so.
Now let’s see whether they alter their infographic.

About Me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Mercer

Jean Mercer has a Ph.D in Psychology from Brandeis University, earned when that institution was 20 years old (you do the math). She is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Richard Stockton College, where for many years she taught developmental psychology, research methods, perception, and history of psychology. Since about 2000 her focus has been on potentially dangerous child psychotherapies, and she has published several related books and a number of articles in professional journals.
Her CV can be seen at http://childmyths.blogspot.com/2009/12/curriculum-vitae-jean.mercer-richard.html.